Comparative Study on the Effects of Socioeconomic Factors, Industrialization, and Urbanization on Mortality in Indonesia and Japan

Japan is a country in the world that has lowest mortality and longest life expectancy. The improvement of health in this country has been remarkable. In the other hand, Indonesia is also experiencing improvement in health condition, but in much lower pace. It is accepted that development programs contribute to this improvement of human quality. Therefore it is important to compare the effects of socioeconomic factors, industrialization, and urbanization on mortality in Indonesia and Japan. The unit analysis is province for Indonesia and prefecture for Japan. The independent factors are low-income, industrialization, and urbanization. These three factors are the composite variables of 11 original variables. The reduction of the dimension of the original independent variables was done using the factor analysis. To test the effects of the three factors on mortality the multivariate regression analysis was employed. The indicator of mortality is the age specific death rate (grouped into 0-14, 15-59, and 60 or over) and the cause specific death rate (grouped into communicable, noncommunicable, and injury and other). For Indonesia the time span of both independent and dependent variables was 1990-1995. For Japan, it was 1990-1997. The results of the study show that the age specific death rate and the cause specific death rate are correlated. In addition, low-income factor and urbanization is important predictor of mortality in Indonesia. In Japan low-income factor, urbanization, and industrialization affect mortality significantly.